Claire: What happened to Cheerleader Minnie?
The girl who tells me I can do anything?
Minnie: She’s still here. She just knows you can do more than make coffee.
Claire: Well, she will also be happy to know I also have my first date tonight.
Minnie: WITH ROGER, WOO-HOO
Miles told me.
Claire: He did?
Minnie:??
Can we talk about Miles for a second?
Claire:No.
Minnie: Why don’t you date him?
Claire: Miles is not interested in a relationship.
He’s playing the field, dating like three women who are all half his age at the same time.
Minnie: Huh.
Claire: Huh, what?
Minnie: He just doesn’t seem like the type.
Chapter 9
The following Saturday morning, I wake up with what feels like a flock of geese in my belly.
And it feels like they’re fighting with each other.
Today, I’m going on my first date in twenty-five years.
With Roger.
His name is Roger.
Before he left last weekend, Miles told me to think of Roger as “practice,” which felt very strange. And maybe a little wrong. But then he explained.
“You’re not going to get everything right the first time,”he’d said.“Give yourself somegrace to feel things out.”
I’m not sure I want to feel things out with Roger.
Miles, in all his vast wisdom, told me that the more practice I get, the easier this whole “going out with strangers on the internet” thing will become.
I don’t have high hopes.
When I started dating—approximately a million years ago—it was different. You’d see a guy in class, maybe, or at a frat party or on campus. You’d make eye contact. Talk. Exchange numbers. Go to dinner. Study together. Make out in the library. Get engaged. Get married. Get pregnant. (Not in that order for some of us...)
Blink and twenty years later find out he’s in love with someone else.
Huh. Maybe Miles is onto something, never wanting to do any of this again.
